


Intersection

by lodessa



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/M, living backwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-27
Updated: 2006-02-27
Packaged: 2017-11-07 14:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitter tears stain her cheek as lines erase from his face only to appear on hers. </p><p> </p><p>Based on the common facet of the myth: Merlin lives backwards, getting younger instead of older.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intersection

When Nimue is a small girl with golden hair, Merlin is very very old. She sits on his lap as he tells her stories about fairies and knights that get lost for a thousand years, then reappear thinking only a few days have passed. Sometimes Nimue sneaks away from the nursemaid and off into the marshes, hoping to lose her way and be taken by the fairy folk and meet their beautiful queen. The fairies never come though, and eventually she heads home, tired and unfulfilled. “Teach me how to find the fairies!” she tells Merlin, and the old man laughs and tells her to ask him when she’s older, when she’s become a woman because it isn’t child’s play. Being told that makes Nimue angry, and she hates being a little girl and goes to bed wishing with all her might to wake up a woman in the morning. Nimue does not wake up a woman for countless mornings and at last she gives up wishing. By the time she starts to become a woman, Merlin seems younger than her grandfather. When hers breasts begin to blossom, and she wakes with blood on her sheets for the first time, Nimue wants to ask Merlin about the fairies again, but by now she knows that it is child’s play after all. Besides, Merlin has been gone for years, off to the court at Camelot she’s heard the servants say. 

At age sixteen, Nimue is sent to Camelot herself. Merlin seems closer to her father’s age when she gets there, but she recognizes him regardless, and has a sudden urge to throw her arms around him like she did as a child of six. Nimue is not six anymore though, so she extends her hand and lets Merlin kiss it instead. Merlin smiles at her, a different smile than he used to give when she’d asked about the fairies, and leads her to the high dais to meet the King. When he introduces her, Merlin uses the word Lady, and Nimue knows he sees her with different eyes. The court is nothing like home, and there is little time to get lost out in the marshes, not that there are any marshes to get lost in around Camelot. Her fingers grow tired of pricks from embroidery, and Nimue begs to be excused from the Queen’s sewing circle one fine spring day. Merlin finds her gathering flowers on the hillside; he’s young enough now to bear exercise. He lays his cloak down on the grass to protect her dress when she wants to rest. Both are clad in green, blending into the hillside. They speak in low tones reserved for secrets and intimacy. When he mentions her previous desire for fairies, Nimue blushes and feels ashamed of her former childishness. She tells him that she is a woman now and desires more grown up things than fantastic tales. That is when Merlin kisses her, not like the kisses to her forehead when she was a girl, kisses from an old man to a child, but strong and sure, kisses like a man gives his beloved.

Nimue doesn’t care about the whispers of the others, when she rides out so very often, everyone knows to meet Merlin. She knows that they say that he is too old for her, too old for such a, affair. Nimue is a woman now though, a woman in love, and every day he looks more handsome to her. She doesn’t notice when the whispers alter, from condescension to envy. She doesn’t realize until Merlin is offered the hand of a girl, of better birth and years younger than herself. Merlin is now barely as old as Nimue’s brothers, and Nimue realizes that she’s getting older by the day. Bitter tears stain her cheek as lines erase from his face only to appear on hers. He doesn’t seem to notice yet, but Nimue knows the day is coming soon when he will. Seeming childish is the last concern that Nimue has by this time so she asks him, “Teach me how to find the fairies, you promised me once when I was a little girl.” He obliges, showing Nimue just how true all the stories she considered fancy were. As the weeks go by, he is the image of youthful perfection and the day comes where Nimue cannot bear to see him slide into boyhood.

The fairies cannot help her, Nimue is a woman now, and a jealous one at that, and she cannot abide the thought of giving him to their Queen. Every inch of magic goes into the frozen cave, every inch of love and pain and childhood frustration, somewhere safe, safe from humanity and safe from the fairy people. Merlin is so young now that he doesn’t know what she’s concerned about, why she cannot focus merely on the sunshine and his kisses. Nimue remembers when it was she that was young and happy. Her breasts feel heavy in his hands now, and she remembers when she was so girlish and lithe and he aging with gout. Merlin suspects nothing when she pulls him into the place she’s prepared, laying him down there with final caresses and kisses as wild as she had been timid. “I love you.” She whispers, tears in her eyes, and then she is gone, back to Camelot with an empty heart. The domain of fairies isn’t child’s play after all. Now Nimue is a woman and she could find the fairies, but instead she must go aid the King, who has lost his most valuable advisor.


End file.
